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i"77 i ' ' :
/I . ' 75 7 7'
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: 11 ,7
[ 3®4 ]
mty to write an Aerariiim poeticum,
and’ become the predecelTbr o f Wein-
reich ? Here I will only obferve, that
Snorre was noteonilantly lagman, and
that he might have compiled this work
before be obtained this dignity, or in
the interval between the firil; and fécond
admmiflration*of this confider-
able charge ; and laftly, even in its vacancies.
Neither Mr. Schlozer nor I
are able to determine how much time
the rnanagement of a lagman’s office
requires. They hold feveral yearly
court-days or affizes, after which I
have always underftood that they are
entirely free and difengaged ; ib that
I may fairly infer, that; the lagmen are
not troubled with tlie. examination of
tedions records, or are employed in any
extraordinary works. We find many
Icelandic lagmen who have been poet
lauréats in Sweden and Norway, as
Marcus Skaggafon, Sturle Thordarfon,
gnd others. I f Mr, Schlozer’s ar^^
gument was conclufive, he might go
ftill farther, and prove, that Stur-
lefon could neither have written the
Heimfkringla, or hiftory of the norch-
ern kings, which required ten times
z more
[ 3°5 ]
more time, and more laborious dift
quifitions, than the Edda.
Mr, Schlozer founds his fecond
argument on his believing it incredible,
that any one in the golden
age o f poetry in Iceland fliould pre-
fume to advance fuch abfurd things
as I have done in my letter. He
therefore believes the Edda to be a
produdion o f later times, when
poetry was in its decline in Iceland.
To underftand the whole force o f
this argument, it muft be known,
that Mr. Schlozer divides the Icelandic
literature into three periods ; the
flmple period, from the beginning to
the introduction o f Chriftianity ; the
golden period, from the introduction
of Chriftianity to the clofe of the thirteenth
century, when the black death
or the great plague, as well as the ftib-
jection of the Icelanders to the crown
of Norway, checked the progrefs o f
poetry ; and the laft, from that period
to the prefent. I will not ftrictly examine
this divifion, though I cannot
comprehend that the introduelion o f
U Chriftianity
ri M